Past performance may be the most common tool used for hiring, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the best one. How many times have you found yourself with a new hire who looked great on paper, but was underperforming for you? The truth is, a job candidate’s prior performance in no way guarantees his or her future success. It’s time to take a broader view and consider a candidate’s potential as part of your organization’s hiring strategy.
Hiring Tips for Recognizing Potential
Some people would say it’s foolish to invest in potential because it’s an unknown factor. But this is more about looking at someone’s personality and creative thought process and determining if those traits would make him or her a good fit within your company’s culture. Here are some great hiring tips that will help you discover untapped potential in job candidates.
- Be open, but skeptical. Resumes are the marketing pitches candidates use to land a position, and they often pay someone to carefully craft them. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but keep in mind there is probably a bit of embellishment going on, particularly about traits or accomplishments that apply to the position you’re hiring for. That leaves little room for determining potential. Use pre-employment assessments to find the hidden potential that isn’t always obvious through traditional hiring processes.
- Education is not the be all end all. Limiting your recruiting to applicants from top universities means you lose out on interviewing a lot of high-potential candidates. Education is, of course, required and valuable, but other important factors, such as creativity, leadership, cooperation and integration, are personality-related and factor heavily in a person’s overall job performance.
- Welcome to the family. You can narrow down your top choices based on skills and experience, but what about a candidate’s personality? Does it fit within your organization’s culture? Candidates with impressive career accomplishments are great, but ignore cultural fit and it’s not likely they’ll be accomplishing much within your firm. Make it your aim to understand a candidate’s personality and how well it will fit within your company’s cultural structure.
- Value over quantity. Experience matters, but not in the way you may think. Look for candidates who possess experience in the skills that are valuable to your organization, and put less weight on “shiny object” experience like working for a Fortune 500 company.
Hidden Benefits of Hiring for Potential
Organizations that take a chance on candidates with less experience have a greater pool to choose from and stand a much better chance of finding a diamond in the rough who will want to prove her or himself as the right choice. One way to find these hidden gems is to work with a qualified staffing partner. Traditional hiring practices tend to be based on subjective considerations, but today’s modern hiring tools are creating opportunities for recruiters to use more objective criteria that can reveal a candidates hidden potential.